Stoopid Stuff

You Can't Say That!! I Demand an Apology!

So, let's be real clear. You can't accuse the CIA of lying, because they are wholesome keepers of the American dream. You can't ever say that police acted "stupidly", because goodness knows they only ever act with wisdom and altruism in their unstained hearts. You cannot suggest that American soldiers died in Iraq for nothing, because American soldiers are, to a man and a woman, saints with guns, unmarked by the horror of their profession. You cannot call the abusive treatment of detainees "torture" because there is a perfectly reasonable policy debate about the meaning of that word, and to simply use it as it is defined would be a partisan act. And of course, if some OTHER nation acts in exactly the same way, it can accurately be described as torture, as obviously there is no policy debate about THEIR actions. And heaven forbid you should mention the horrendous treatment of the innocent civilians of the Gaza Strip by the Israelis, or that it is precisely this kind of collective punishment they had in mind in Geneva when they designated it a war crime. Certainly, the Israelis, just like the Americans, are by definition incapable of committing war crimes.

Of course, we all know what we're really seeing here. It's a kind of conversational filibuster, designed to do nothing so much as silence ideas we dislike. And like the filibuster, we sit back and let it be used against us because we desperately want to be able to use it against our ideological foes tomorrow. If we can create a general sense that some things simply should not be discussed, then we never have to consider those ideas on the merits. We can simply attack someone for saying these things, and that acts to limit the exposure the idea can get, reducing the tendency of people to bring it up. In a perfect social feedback loop, by defining an idea as off limits, we enforce the belief that idea IS actually off limits.

Interestingly, these taboos can evolve over time. We saw a very interesting example of this in 2002-2003 with the invasion of Iraq. To even question the legitimacy, necessity or utility of that invasion was to immediately be shouted down, as those ideas were not considered to be part of the legitimate conversation. To even consider them was to become ineligible to particpate in the discussion, as you were simply not "serious". Now, of course, all of those ideas have not only been validated, they are the widely accepted consensus. But at the time they mattered, when they might have made a profound difference, they were effectively taboo.

This needs to stop. By making specific ideas off limits, by limiting the conversation to non-controversial topics we are allowing the defenders of the status quo to control the discussion. The purpose of this type of argument is to suppress ideas, not to argue against them but rather to try to prevent them from ever being considered. We have to be willing to offer these ideas up in the face of shouts of "racism", of "unamerican", of "soft on crime" or "supporter of terror", and defend them in a manner that requires an opponent to make an argument against the idea, rather than an argument intended to disallow the idea. And we have to have the courage to reject this same tactic when it would favor us. It is only logical that if we cannot construct an argument for why a bad idea is bad, maybe it's not a bad idea after all. And if we can construct such an argument, THAT is the position we need to take.

Ideas can be good or bad, but the discussion of ideas is always good. Silencing an ideological opponent does not win the argument, it is the tactic of a bully. It seems that the arguments against even discussing ideas are louder these days than the arguments of the ideas themselves, but that is a toxic formula that must be resisted...

posted by mikey @ 7:08 PM